In the field of documentary, voice, rather than point of view, is the prevailing metaphor for a filmmaker’s unique perspective, signaling the documentary genre’s emphasis on spoken words, as well as its enduring social mission of “giving voice.” My talk will unpack the humanitarian resonances of this metaphor, as elaborated in my book Immediations: The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary (Duke UP 2017), in conversation with recent scholarship on race, sound, and listening. I will discuss how documentary’s vocal conventions can normalize as well as undermine the complex hierarchies of race, gender, and other axes of difference implicated in the practices of giving voice and bearing witness.

Pooja Rangan is Assistant Professor of English in Film and Media Studies at Amherst College.She is the author of Immediations: The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary (Duke UP 2017), and coeditor of a forthcoming special issue of the journalDiscourse on “Documentary Audibilities.”